Should there be a ban on television advertisements aimed at children?

A great deal of advertising on television is aimed at children, promoting not only toys and sweets but also products such as food, drink, music, films and clothing to young consumers from toddlers to teenagers. Increasingly this practice is coming under attack from parents’ organisations, politicians and pressure groups in many countries. Sweden, Ireland, Greece, Italy, Denmark and Belgium all currently impose restrictions, and these have also been proposed in most other EU countries and in the USA. Within Europe, the forthcoming EU Television Without Frontiers Directive, due to be issued by 2004, is likely to focus attention upon the issue as the advertising industry and anti-advertising groups battle over whether age restrictions should be imposed upon the whole EU in the future. A key factor in any debate will be the age definition of “children�. Recent campaigns in the USA and Britain have concentrated upon banning advertising to under-fives watching "toddler-television", but a Swedish proposal for an EU-wide ban applies to under-12s (a definition which might produce a livelier and more focused debate)

What do we think?

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Advertising specifically to children is unethical because they have little or no money of their own and have to persuade their parents to buy the products for them. Rather than advertising directly to parents, companies use a "nag and whine" campaign that leads to bad feeling between parents and children. They rely on pester power to make adults spend money they don’t have on things they don’t want to buy, and which their children may well only play with for a few hours. Advertising which presents products to children as "must-have" is also socially divisive, making children whose parents cannot afford them appear inferior, and creating feelings of frustration and inadequacy, as well as leading families into debt.

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i also think its how you bring your kids up to realise they cant have everything they see, my kids do ask like any others but if i say i cant afford it, thats enough for them, being a single parent i suppose ive drummed it in to them that they can only have 'bigger' stuff for birthdays etc and they are happy with that

yeah i agree 6cats but some parents arent strong enough to say no, if you are used to getting everything you want then a parent loses their job and money is hard to come by. It can change things.

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i agree with that lee

Why do they allow loan ads for 4 mins every 10 mins on kids sky channels ?

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ive always wondered why the need for adverts like that during specific childrens channels

and why do they have ads for morgeges on kids tv as well

I thought I would bring this debate up again as I think its a very good debate.

I dont think advertisements aimed at children for toys, trainers, ect should be put on prime time tv. I understand that all manufacturers have things to sell, but they should realise that these kids are going to nag and beg until they get it.

Theres a lot of parents who cannot afford to buy children the lastest toy every week or month and theres a lot parents who feel that even though they cant afford it, they have to buy it or that makes them a bad parent.

My mum and dad could afford to do that when i was little, but they chose to say no to me, and i believe they taught me a very good lesson, in that you dont have to have everything right there and then, and waiting is a good thing. I always got bigger things from Christmas and Birthdays like Nita says, and i believe this has brought me up to appreciate the value of things. :grin:

i agree with you there lors, children also have a lot of peer pressure which puts a hell of a lot more pressure on parents without them seeing these adverts too :cry:

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